4 causes of world war 1 essay
World War 1 occurred due to tensions between countries and The Moroccan Crisis of is seen as one of the key events which led to World War 1 as it influenced the trust between major European powers such as Germany and Britain. Morocco was on the market during , allowing major countries to conquer it. What occurred during the Moroccan Crisis of ? Great Britain was a dominating power at. World War I was caused by aggressive nationalism, military power and imperialism. The large military alliances and navy and arms race also contributed to World War I.
The Main Causes of World War 1 Essay
Its casualty totals were unprecedented, soaring into the millions. World War I is known for the extensive system of trenches from which men of both sides fought. Lethal new technologies were unleashed, and for the first time a major war was fought not only on land and on sea but below the sea and in the skies as well. A number of smaller nations aligned themselves with one side or the other.
In the Pacific Japan, seeing a chance to seize German colonies, threw in with the Allies. The Allies were the victors, as the entry of the United States into the war in added an additional weight of men and materiel the Central Powers could not hope to match. The war resulted in a dramatically changed geo-political landscape, including the destruction of three empires: Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian.
New borders were drawn at its conclusion and resentments, especially on the part of Germany, left festering in Europe.
Ironically, decisions made after the fighting ceased led the War to End War to be a significant cause of the Second World War. In terms of sheer numbers of lives lost or disrupted, the Great War was the most destructive war in history until it was overshadowed by its offspring, the Second World War: an estimated 10 million military deaths from all causes, plus 20 million more crippled or severely wounded.
For more information, click to see the Casualties of World War I. The outbreak of war between European nations was the result of several factors:. Following their victory in the Franco-Prussian War, the German states unified into a single nation. This would increase German influence in the world and likely allow the country to expand its colonial holdings. Russia was rebuilding and modernizing its large army and had begun a program of industrialization.
They formed an alliance for self-protection against the Russian bear. France, still stinging over the loss of Alsace and part of Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian war, made an agreement allying itself with Russia in any war with Germany or Austria-Hungary. Britain, after finding itself friendless during the Second Boer War in South Africa — allied itself with France and worked to improve relations with the United States of America.
Russia, with many ethnic groups inside its vast expanse, made an alliance with Serbia in the Balkans. As its ability to exert control over its holdings in the Balkans weakened, ethnic and regional groups broke away and formed new states. Rising nationalism led to the First and Second Balkan Wars, and As a result of those wars, Serbia increased its size and began pushing for a union of all South Slavic peoples.
Serbian nationalism led year-old Gavrilo Princip to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Habsburg throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, Sophie. Austria-Hungary, urged on by Germany, sent a list of demands to Serbia in response; the demands were such that Serbia was certain to reject them.
Russia came in on the side of the Serbs, Germany on the side of the Habsburgs, and the entangling alliances between the nations of Europe pulled one after another into the war.
Although diplomats throughout Europe strove to settle matters without warfare right up to the time the shooting started, the influence military leaders enjoyed in many nations won out—along with desires to capture new lands or reclaim old ones.
German military planners were ready when the declarations of war began flying across Europe. They intended to hold off the Russians in the east, swiftly knock France out of the war through a maneuver known as the Schliefffen Plan, then throw their full force, along with Austria-Hungary, against the Russians.
The Schliefffen Plan, named for General Count Alfred von Schlieffen who created it in , called for invading the Low Countries Luxembourg and Belgium in order to bypass to the north the strong fortifications along the French border. After a rapid conquest of the Low Countries, the German advance would continue into northern France, swing around Paris to the west and capture the French capital.
It almost worked, but German commander in chief General Helmuth von Moltke decided to send his forces east of Paris to engage and defeat the weakened French army head-on. In doing so he exposed his right flank to counterattack by the French and a British Expeditionary Force, resulting in the First Battle of the Marne, September 6—10, Despite casualties in the hundreds of thousands, the battle was a stalemate, but it stopped the German drive on Paris.
Both sides began digging a network of trenches. The First Battle of the Marne was a window onto how the rest of the war would be fought: extensive trenchworks against which large numbers of men would be hurled, suffering extremely high casualties for little if any territorial gains. The centuries-old method of massed charges to break through enemy positions did not work when the men faced machine guns, barbed wire, and drastically more effective artillery than in the past.
The next four years would see battles in which millions of artillery shells were fired and millions of men were killed or mutilated. Click here to read about some of the costliest battles of the First World War.
Deadly new weapons were responsible for the unprecedented carnage. Among the lethal technological developments that were used for the first time or in some cases used for the first time in a major conflict during the Great War were the machine gun, poison gas, flamethrowers, tanks and aircraft. Artillery increased dramatically in size, range and killing power compared to its 19th-century counterparts.
In the war at sea, submarines could strike unseen from beneath the waves, using torpedoes to send combat and merchant ships to the bottom. Click here for more information on Weapons of World War I. On the Eastern Front, the German general Paul von Hindenburg and his chief of staff Erich Ludendorff engineered strategies that gave them dramatic victories over Russian armies.
The war became increasing unpopular among the Russian people. As hoped, Lenin helped fuel the rising revolutionary fervor. The tsar was deposed and executed with his family in the March revolution.
When the new government failed to bring about a rapid peace, it was overthrown in November by a socialist revolution led by Lenin, following which Russia signed a peace agreement with Germany.
Fighting in the high elevations of the Balkans and Alps created additional agony for soldiers fighting there: bitterly cold winters and especially rugged terrain. Serbia, whose countryman had fired the shots that gave rise to the slaughter taking place in Europe, was invaded twice by Austria-Hungary but repulsed both attempts. In the autumn of , a third invasion came.
This time the Hapsburgs were joined by Germany and Bulgaria. The outnumbered Serbs gave ground. Ultimately, the Serbian Army only escaped annihilation by a demanding march through Albania to the Adriatic Sea, where the French Navy rescued the survivors.
Romania remained neutral until August when it joined the Allies and declared war on Austria-Hungary in hopes of securing additional territories including Transylvania. As the poorly trained Romanian army advanced into Transylvania, German forces invaded and occupied Romania itself, quickly knocking the country out of the war. Italy, wooed by both sides, entered the war on the Allied side in May What gains the Italians made in the war were wiped out by a rout that began at Caporeto in October and unhinged the entire line.
An attempted invasion on the Gallipoli Peninsula resulted in a bloody repulse, but war in the interior of the Ottoman Empire met with greater success. Arab groups seeking to overthrow the empire waged a successful guerrilla war in the Mideast, led by Prince Feisal, third son of the Grand Sharif of Mecca. The revolt was aided by British liaison officer T. Lawrence of Wales, who became known as Lawrence of Arabia. When the war ended, the Ottoman Empire was broken up. England and France drew borders for new countries in the Mideast without regard for ethnic and religious factions.
The centuries-old tensions between the native inhabitants of the region led to many of the problems causing turmoil in the Mideast today, another irony of the War to End War. Africa was home to a sideshow of the European fighting. European nationals and colonial troops of both sides fought against each other, but the German colonies were widely separated and unable to support each other. In German East Africa Tanzania an aggressive general named Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck waged a guerilla campaign against his British opponents until after the armistice was signed in Europe that ended the Great War.
In the waters of the Pacific Ocean German commerce raiders found prey among merchant vessels of Allied nations. Japan joined the Allies war effort on August 23, , ostensibly in fulfillment of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Accomplishing that goal while supporting large armies engaged in warfare proved impossible for Germany, but World War I saw the last great battles fought entirely between surface ships.
Jutland would prove to be not only the largest naval battle up to that time but the last in which fighting would take place only between surface ships. The most significant advance in naval warfare to come out of the Great War was the development of submarines, which the German Imperial Navy called Unterseeboots undersea boats.
That got shortened to U-boats, a name that became synonymous with submarine. Subs could hide beneath the waves in shipping lanes to attack merchant or combat ships with torpedoes without ever being seen.
Germany engaged in such unrestricted warfare until U sunk the British passenger liner Lusitania off Ireland in May Over 1, lives were lost, including Americans, and the US threatened to break diplomatic relations with Germany. The Imperial Navy subsequently instituted strict regulations for U-boat attacks, but those went by the boards in as the Germans tried to cut off supplies to Britain and starve the island nation into submission.
It was a bad decision. Airplanes had already seen limited military before World War I began. Italian aircraft were used for reconnaissance and small-scale bombing during the Italo-Turkish War of Aircraft during World War I continued to be used primarily for reconnaissance, including photo-reconnaissance missions.
Pilots began shooting at each other with pistols and rifles. Soon various schemes were attempted to attach machine guns to planes. Early war planes were very light and used small engines with top speeds of less than mph. On many designs the engine was in the rear and pushed the plane through the air. Changes might occur within weeks; in the decades following the war, such changes would take years. Zeppelins were also used for reconnaissance and for bombing over land and sea.
While the war on the ground was a miserable existence in muddy, rat- and disease-infested trenches, and millions of lives might be spent to gain a few miles of territory, the war in the air captured the imagination of the world.
Using this exciting new technology to maneuver through the skies and engage the enemy in one-on-one dogfights in which skillful pilots could rise to the status of ace gave the air war a sense of glamour that still hangs over the pilots of World War I. America was drawn into the conflict by the Zimmerman telegraph and unrestricted submarine warfare. On January 16, , Foreign Secretary of the German Empire Arthur Zimmerman sent a coded message to the German ambassador in Mexico City, Heinrich von Eckart informing him Germany would return to unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, a policy that might cause America to declare war.
The code was broken, and the contents of the telegram published on March 1. Americans were outraged. Two weeks later German U-boats sank three American vessels. Wilson asked Congress on April 1 to authorize a declaration of war against Germany, which it did four days later.
War was declared on the other Central Powers shortly thereafter. When American troops and war materiel began arriving in Europe later in , it unalterably shifted the balance of power in favor of the Allies. A final German offensive began on May 21, , an attempt to win the war before the full weight of American strength could arrive.
It's possibly the single most pondered question in history – what caused the unbound, senseless slaughter that was World War One? It wasn't, like. Nationalism was a pride in one's country and people were willing to fight for their national pride. Imperialism was bigger countries taking over smaller, weaker.
Militarism was the creation of armies, was the biggest problem in Germany, and other countries followed to have the strongest military. Alliances were a problem, but the main problem about them was secret alliances. Imperialism was bigger countries taking over smaller, weaker countries. Germany was the main problem in this because they wanted land in Africa like Great Britain.
Thanks to new military technologies and the horrors of trench warfare, World War I saw unprecedented levels of carnage and destruction. By the time the war was over and the Allied Powers claimed victory, more than 16 million people—soldiers and civilians alike—were dead.
Students read a challenging essay answer on the causes of the First World War then highlight the text to identify features of the writing. The outbreak of the First World War in was due to a combination of causes which were both long-term and short-term: alliances, militarism, imperialism, nationalism, and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This essay will consider the extent to which the alliance system was the most significant of these causes, and more crucially, the way in which the alliance system was linked to the other causes.
World War 1 Essay
Its casualty totals were unprecedented, soaring into the millions. World War I is known for the extensive system of trenches from which men of both sides fought. Lethal new technologies were unleashed, and for the first time a major war was fought not only on land and on sea but below the sea and in the skies as well. A number of smaller nations aligned themselves with one side or the other. In the Pacific Japan, seeing a chance to seize German colonies, threw in with the Allies.
World War I
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the world was seething an explosive, hair-trigger force. Capitalism was undergoing a transition to imperialism. The worlds territory was divided among the worlds most powerful nations. Colonies were scattered throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The struggle between the new empires and the old ones was getting larger and larger. In the era of the jungle, wars were quick to break out. As new forces began to snatch resources, uneven economic development and inadequate allocation of resources among countries as well as the enthusiasm of showing national status and pride, the First World War broke out in July, There were four main reasons militarism, alliance, imperialism and nationalism aroused the nerves of these Kings in this animal world.
For more than four years, World War One WW1 was a conflict that caused a destruction to land and many family members who have lost their lives.
Pssst… we can write an original essay just for you. Militarism is when the government will maintain a strong military capability and will be aggressive to defend from attackers. Nationalism is when people of a country will stay strong with the culture of that country.
Four Main Causes of World War i
We are always here to help you with your assignments when you are tied-up with something else. KingEssays reviews:. Among all the disasters, caused by humanity, World War I was the first global disaster. World War I started in and lasted four years. Four years of destruction and killing. The U. More than 9 million people were killed and even more people returned to their homes maimed physically and mentally. Humanity has not seen a catastrophe on such a scale before. Causes and consequences of World War I are an issue, which is still discussed actively. Its consequences are still perceptible in the modern world.
Did Franz Ferdinand’s Assassination Cause World War I?
Officially, Germany shouldered much of the blame for the conflict, which caused four years of unprecedented slaughter. But a series of complicated factors caused the war, including a brutal assassination that propelled Europe into the greatest conflict the continent had ever known. On June 28, the couple went to the capital city of Sarajevo to inspect imperial troops stationed there. As they headed toward their destination, they narrowly escaped death when Serbian terrorists threw a bomb at their open-topped car. Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria, and his wife Sophie riding in an open carriage at Sarajevo shortly before their assassination. Their luck ran out later that day, however, when their driver inadvertently drove them past year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip who shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife at point-blank range.
